Oh, and the replay value for the game extends as long as your attention span for its B-movie gameplay does. You can play the game single-player, multiplayer, or online in both cooperative and competitive modes. You can play through the whole campaign with buddies or alone, leveling up as you go, or you can play in a survival mode that lets you blast away until you die. Heck, there is even a campaign remix mode, and you can randomize the stages and difficulties you play on. There are so many options to customize your experience with, but it's all really the same thing. It's the same missions, the same repetitive gameplay, and the same experience grind no matter what mode you play in.

The game is absolutely infested with faults outside of its repetitive gameplay. For example, there is no strong visual, tactical, or audio confirmation that you have hit or killed an enemy, so the game is largely spray and pray. The mini-map is very hard to read and waypoints are very hard to find. Mission objectives can be ambiguous, causing you to wander around for no good reason when all you really had to do was wait. Perhaps worst of all, there are no checkpoints. If you die at any point in any mission, you'll have to start the mission all over again.

However, the visual aesthetic of the game just keeps me coming back. Spiders crumble buildings all around me as I pump an infinite number of rockets into them. Huge bipedal wasp things fire plasma cannons at innocent civilians as they scream and run away. Explosive ticks latch themselves on to me only to get blown up by my suit's shockwave first. It's just the kind of B-movie schlock that made me watch flicks like The Thing when I was a kid.

I'm honestly astounded as to how any game can be so good and so bad at the same time. Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon is mindless and dumb any way you look at it, but I just can't stop playing. I feel like that one guy in the back of every Michael Bay movie that's laughing hysterically while everyone else is putting their face in their hands and groaning. You know, that's exactly what Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon is, the Michael Bay of third-person shooters. There are big guns, jet packs, explosions, and other action movie tropes all around you, and you don't even have to watch Shia LeBeouf attempt to act. I'd say that alone is worth forty bucks, wouldn't you?

By
Angelo M. D'Argenio
CCC Contributing Writer

RATING OUT OF 5

RATING DESCRIPTION

2.5

GraphicsThe graphics in the game aren't very good, but there's an undeniable charm in seeing a giant spider wreck a skyscraper.

2.7

ControlCan you hold down the right trigger? Then you can play this game.